Rants and raves about the mess of higher education in the United States.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Failing in College?

What to do if you’re
failing in college

By Professor Doom

What's below is just an overview. To fail at the end of a semester, a student needs to make mistakes starting not just at the beginning of the semester, but before he signs up for classes.

My book, "What to do if you are failing in College" says many things (like how to find the easy courses) that no guidance counselor will tell you. There's a whole chapter there on things to do if you're failing in
college, right now...and lots of information to keep from failing again. Save that link...you won't find that book (or the advice in it) in any university bookstore.. It makes more sense to admin to sell you $20,000 a year tuition than a $25 book that tells you how to get your degree as easily as possible, after all.

Looking to save yourself tens of thousands of dollars, but want to do it for even cheaper than 25 bucks? You can read below for some quick tips:

This is the time of year when students that have blown off the semester realize they're probably going to fail...and it's also the time when parents of such students, tired of getting vague responses to questions of "how's school going?", get answers they don't like much.

So, happy Thanksgiving and all, and here's some advice.

Student: “Hi.”

Me: “Hi. Do I know
you?”

Student: “Yeah, I’m in
your class.”

Me: “I don’t think
I’ve seen you before.”

Student: “I know, I’ve
had a real problem with attendance, but I want to know what I can do to pass
this class?”

Me: “The final exam is
in ten minutes. Have you taken even one of the four tests?”

Students: “No. But can
I do something for extra credit? Professor [well known fraud and administrative
darling] is giving me credit.”

--I get students like
this every year or so.

Only a few weeks
remain in the semester. This is the time of year I get graduate students
offering to pay any hourly fee I ask for help with their assignments. It’s also
the time of year that students that have blown off the semester realize that
they’re likely to fail the course, and start thinking about what they can do to
pass. The main reasons students fail is they don’t come to class, so I’ll talk
about what to do in that case first.

“I had stuff to do.”

--one student’s excuse
for missing classes. The sheer chutzpah of it made me give him a break.

First off, do you
have an excuse?If you do, it helps to
have a good one. Please, don’t do the grandparent dying thing…that works for
missing a day, maybe two days. I’m sorry for your loss, but you’re not going to
get a break for a whole semester based on that.

Student: “The reason I
missed the whole semester was because my brother murdered his wife, my sister
in law, in Mississippi, so my whole family had to go to Mississippi for the
trial, you know, for support.”

--this is the kind of
excuse that has a chance. I gave the poor girl a break, and told her if she
could just pass the exam and last test, I’d pass her. It didn’t work out.

A really good
excuse really has to have some reason to explain why you missed a few months of
coursework. Even if you do have the excuse, realize this is the modern world:
you could have e-mailed at any time to let the professor know what’s up with
you, and you need to have an answer for that.

“B+”

--Stuff-to-do guy took
the final, and scored far better than students that had come to class
regularly. It would have just been wrong to fail him. To me, a demonstration of
skill is far more relevant than sitting at a desk for a few hours.

Even if you have
a great excuse, realize that ultimately you’ll need to demonstrate to the
professor that you really have a passing knowledge of the course material. If
you haven’t learned anything, then you need a different reason for not failing.

Student: “I have
mercury poisoning. Here’s my documentation.”

--In over 20 years of
teaching in higher education, I’ve given one “I” grade. This was his excuse,
and he did look awful. It didn’t work out.

If you’ve missed
a few months, know that you don’t know enough to justify passing, and can
document a serious reason (typically medical, like a serious auto accident
putting you into a coma for weeks), you can get an “I” grade, for Incomplete.
This will let you have a few more months to learn the material. It’s very rare,
and not one time have I observed a student getting an Incomplete and actually
passing the course (because typically, students with severe problems like this
really have better things to do than college coursework). But this is one way
to avoid an F grade…you’ll just most likely get one a few months later, and
faculty really hate dealing with Incomplete students.

Student: “Sniffle.”

--about every semester
a girl comes at the end and tries to use tears to get a passing grade. I’ve known
a few females that can turn it off and on at will, so this generally goes
nowhere, and other faculty tell me they’re seldom moved by mere tears. Despite
my constant enforced gender training given by pompous buffoons that insist
males and females are the same, I’ve never had a male student try this.

So, you don’t
know anything, have crap for an excuse, but still want a break?

Student: “The reason I
missed the test two weeks ago is I went out on Saturday night and got hit with
a roofie that put me in a coma for almost twelve hours.”

Me: “So you recovered
on Sunday?”

Student: “Yeah.”

Me: “The test was on
Friday. If you’d told me, you know, a few weeks ago I’d be inclined to give you
a few extra days or something, but why did you wait until after the drop date?
There’s not much I can do now.”

Student: “So you’re
not going to pass me.”

Me: “You missed three
weeks before that.”

Student: “I WAS PUT
INTO A COMA!”

---she stormed away,
and I was thankful.

You have no
legitimate reason for passing, but want to pass, and the faculty won’t help
you? Try going to admin. As I’ve discussed before, administrators are generally
the biggest academic frauds. At the minimum, they’ll politely listen to your
complaint. Bring the syllabus, and try to lawyer how the syllabus was unclear
what would happen if you’ve missed a test or three…administrators are very
easily confused, and you can often confuse them with words.

To be fair, many
syllabi do not explicitly say what is meant by “missing a test.” If the
professor gives any make-up, then “missing a test” means more than not showing
up on test day, obviously. Even if you were absent, you can claim you were
there, but the test was lost…or that you attended class but the professor just
didn’t mark you down. This puts the professor in the impossible position of
trying to prove you were not there, or prove you didn’t take the test…rather
than try to deal with admin, the professor will usually just buckle, claim to
have found the test and give the student an A.

By the way, I’ve
directly observed the previous, so yeah, as corrupt and evil advice as it is, I
give it because I’ve seen it work…more often than not (actually, “not” was just
one time).

Administration: “I’ve
spoken with the student. She was in tears. Please, for the sake of publicity,
give this victim of sexual assault an opportunity to make up lost work.”

--roofie girl went to
admin. So now I look like a bastard, and I must pass her or make an enemy of
admin. She didn’t tell me she was raped, but she did have weeks to just drop
the course. I wonder if one can get through med school by claiming to be raped
every semester…

So, if all else fails, go to admin.
I’m not saying it’s a sure thing, but depending on the quality of school (the
lower the better) and where the admin comes from (for example, admin that has
never been faculty, and only has degrees in administration is best).

Now, if you have
integrity, and you’re legitimately in college for an education, seriously
consider why you’re getting an F. Honest, some professors are jerks—I’ve never
known one to give arbitrary F’s, but I’m sure it can happen. It’s not the end
of the world. One professor I know has a transcript littered with F’s, D’s, and
C’s, barely getting all his degrees with 2.01 GPAs. He’s great and really knows
what he’s doing. The only C I got in my college career was in a mathematics
course (the professor was a beautiful lecturer, but his tests were insane)…a
single bad grade doesn’t mean much.

Still, that F
could be a message.If you really come
to class every day, do all the work, and actually get an F? Ask yourself if
you’re in the right place. Ask yourself if college is the only way you can
learn whatever it is, and if you really need to learn it in a college setting.
Most college degrees are worthless anyway, and if you’re not going to get
college credit, you could just get the books and read on your own time. It
makes no sense to pay a fortune in tuition and waste months of your time for no
credit at all.

This is all just my
advice, of course, but in decades of teaching, I’ve seen many failing students
come near the end of the semester and ask for something. The later you go, the
worse it will be; don’t even try to get a break 15 minutes before the final
exam, trust me on that. Even some administrators don’t have time for that.